


We Are

by flyingcrane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drabble, Gen, Introspection, Langst, Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stream of Consciousness, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-10-10 20:30:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20534141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingcrane/pseuds/flyingcrane
Summary: "Defenders of the Universe, huh? Has a nice ring to it."---Lance wishes they'd realized sooner, that the declaration had not been the promise of a lifetime but a death sentence.





	We Are

Lance has dreamt of returning home nearly every night since Blue first whisked them away to the stars so long ago, has prayed on every planet and moon they passed that he would see his family again soon. He got his wish in the form of world shattering light and missing time and a _shipcastlehome_ reduced to a glowing blue crystal, the greatest wish he’s ever had with even greater consequence, and he smiles and laughs and tries not to let the cracks in his grin show because he doesn’t want to add nightmares to his family’s collection, doesn’t want them to have night terrors of a broken puppet boy dancing to the tune of a universe so cruel and absolute.

_You are now defenders of the Universe,_ Allura had once proclaimed, sounding so sure, so grand, that a handful of teenagers with their heads in the clouds had looked up to their shining new destiny with all the wonder and hope in the world, hanging off the prophetic words of a girl-queen struggling under the weight of a crown that would never be hers and shaking from the loss of her _everything_.

_Defenders of the universe, huh? _Even Shiro, war ravaged and haunted and painfully kind through it all, had smiled with the shadow of his boyish dreams gleaming in his old, old eyes and said, _Has a nice ring to it._

Oh how Lance wished they could’ve realized the declaration had not been the promise of a lifetime but a death sentence handed down by unsteady hands. How he wished they had not grabbed it with eager fists, grasping at stardust and glory, all wanting something different and yet tied to the same fate.

_We are Paladins of Voltron._

But they didn’t know, did they? They didn’t know, and they would pay for their ignorance in blood and nightmares, _have_ paid for it in spades and more and will keep paying for it until there is less than nothing left of them. The universe is vast, expanding, _infinite_, and whoever thought this group of toy soldiers, of _defenders_, could protect an entire _universe_ when they’d failed so profoundly at protecting their own home, using arbitrary words like _fate_ and _destiny_, should choke on the bitterness Lance pretends he doesn’t drown in every time he closes his mouth to swallow down a scream.

They win, somehow, barely, with an ever expanding wall of names they can never remember and an endless expanse of empty homes that will never be filled again. They win and it feels like mourning with Shiro’s heavy words wrapped around their throats, their apologies masquerading as victorious war cries and desperate celebrations. They rally and rebuild with the entire world at their backs, the survivors so painfully trusting and thankful when they should be breathless with rage, and Lance thinks this is what it means to be the lesser of two evils.

Their time home is temporary, and it seems like he may be the only one aware of the fact. The terror of bringing his family into this life of uncertainty - of _almost_ and _not quite_ and _what if _\- has ripped him from the hazy comfort of their arms so he can see with clarity that this is only another beginning to the scratching record of their lives, stretching through eons. They are picking up where the ten thousand year old story paused, continuing the tapestry chronologizing the beginning and the middle and never the end because there really is no end.

_We are Paladins of Voltron._

He thinks maybe his family knows it too - they had lived years with his absence, not even with the comfort of knowing if he was dead or alive, if they should bury an empty casket when they have no body to burn and set free to the oceans waves. Even if the other Paladins have seen the surface of his mind, have bonded with some metaphysical part of his soul, they will never know Lance like the people that raised him because he is their bits and pieces, the amalgamation of their memories and love and fears.

He thinks his family knows because they _know_ him, every little piece. He sees it in the way his mother’s smile tightens at the stories he tells of his adventurest_raumas_battles_scars._ At the way Veronica looks like she’s seen a hero and a ghost when she watches his targets fall with precision and the shots ring in the air like screams. At the way his niece and nephew watch with too-knowing eyes as his morning alarm startles him into half-awareness and he stumbles around the room with his Paladin gear hanging off his shaky frame. At the way his grandmother quietly prays for him and his immortal soul when his gaze is too distant for too long even surrounded by flesh and blood and family.

The moments pass, fleeting, but they stack on top of each other like uneven porcelain plates and Lance can only wonder what it will sound like when it eventually topples and shatters this delicate balance he has risked his life for, has died at least once for.

They don’t ask why. They don’t as when. They don’t ask _will you stay_ because they already know the answers to all those questions, and even if they don’t, they know what his answer is, what it will always be.

_We are Paladins of Voltron._

**Author's Note:**

> Been posted on my tumblr for a while and decided why not add it here; very introspective and spans the ending of Season 7.


End file.
